March 28 (Bloomberg) -- Jeremiah O. Norton, who made $1.2
million over 2010 and 2011 as a JPMorgan Chase & Co. banker, is
waiting for a U.S. Senate committee to vote on his nomination
for a new job as a $155,500-a-year regulator.

The Senate Banking Committee votes tomorrow on his
nomination to join the board of the Federal Deposit Insurance
Corp. The committee’s approval would make Norton one of four
would-be FDIC regulators awaiting confirmation by the complete
Senate.

Norton is not alone is pursuing a path from Wall Street to
relatively modest compensation in government. Before joining
JPMorgan, Norton worked in the Treasury department for former
Goldman Sachs chief executive Hank Paulson, who amassed more
than $500 million at New York-based Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
before becoming Treasury Secretary in the administration of
President George W. Bush.

Some who move from Wall Street to government are drawn to
the prestige of the work, said Clifford Rossi, a former managing
director of Citigroup Inc.’s consumer lending group and an
executive-in-resident at the University of Maryland’s Robert H.
Smith School of Business. “They can always go back to the
private sector at some point, as we have seen, and pick up where
they left off,” he said.

In U.S. Office of Government Ethics disclosures, Norton
reported assets between $7.5 million and $31 million. Much of
his reported wealth is in JAP Investment Group LP, the largest
stockholder in Herndon, Virginia-based ePlus Inc., run by his
father, Phillip G. Norton. Jeremiah Norton’s share amounts to
$14.8 million in market value of the online supply-chain
management firm, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

He also owns at least $1.1 million in undeveloped Virginia
property near Washington, according to the disclosures.

Confirmations Stalled

Also awaiting confirmation to FDIC posts are its acting
chairman Martin J. Gruenberg, and Thomas Hoenig, who has been
nominated for vice chairman. Confirmations have been delayed by
Republican senators frustrated by President Barack Obama’s Jan.
4 recess appointment of Richard Cordray as director of the
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

“Ever since the Cordray episode, the Republicans are kind
of smarting from those recess appointments,” said Rossi. Obama
also made recess appointments to the National Labor Relations
Board. The FDIC confirmations, he said, would be “tricky.”
Republican Norton is “kind of an olive branch to get those
other three,” he added.

Gruenberg, Obama’s pick to head the independent regulator,
reported between $18,000 and $95,000 in assets on his disclosure
form, which puts asset values into wide ranges. The other
Democrat, Thomas J. Curry, is a current FDIC director and
Obama’s nominee to be Comptroller of the Currency, a job that
means he’d retain an FDIC board post. He also filed a brief
disclosure, detailing between $82,000 and $230,000 in assets.

Republican Contributor

Norton, who declined to comment on his disclosures or
confirmation process, was a former aide to a Republican
congressman, Edward Royce of California, whose re-election
campaigns he contributed $5,000 to last year. He also gave
$2,500 to Republican Senate candidate George Allen of Virginia,
according to contribution disclosures.

Norton served as a deputy assistant Treasury secretary
during the 2008 financial crisis, an experience that will be
invaluable “in terms of how to assess the rules and the
procedures that need to be in place,” said Senator Dan Coats,
an Indiana Republican, at Norton’s confirmation hearing last
week.

When asked by senators how he would work with others at the
FDIC, Norton said it would be “important given the number of
rules that the FDIC and the other agencies must propose and
finalize to have a good working relationship and get our work
done expeditiously.”

Bailout Opposition

Hoenig, who was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of
Kansas City for 20 years, told lawmakers in November that big
banks shouldn’t get bailouts. In preparation to take the No. 2
spot at the FDIC -- an agency given resolution authority for
failing firms under the Dodd-Frank Act -- he disclosed between
$2.5 million and $11 million in assets, including his Fed
pension and a life insurance policy. He earned about $385,000 a
year to run the Kansas City Fed and expects $264,000 a year in
pension benefits, the disclosures said.

Cordray, a former Ohio attorney general, became an
automatic member of the five-person FDIC board when he took over
the CFPB.